Two years after M3GAN’s rampage, her creator, Gemma, resorts to resurrecting her infamous creation in order to take down Amelia, the military-grade weapon who was built by a defense contractor who stole M3GAN’s underlying tech.
Chuck says:
If nothing else, you have to give Gerard Johnstone credit for not just doing the same old thing in the sequel “M3GAN 2.0.” While most follow-ups simply follow the same pattern and story of their predecessors, doing it louder and longer than the original, this follow-up goes down a decidedly different path. Using James Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” as its template, we get a kinder killer robot who strives to understand human emotions, going so far as to achieving a sense of empathy for her flesh-and-blood counterparts.
Granted, in going that route, Johnstone won’t earn any points for originality, but credit for him for using his pop culture platform to issue a plea for restraint and common sense where the use and development of Artificial Intelligence is concerned. If the film gets anything right, it’s that this warning will fall on deaf ears, but at least he can say he tried.
A lot has happened to Gemma (Allison Williams), the tech genius from the first film. She was tried for unleashing the killer robot M3GAN (Amie Donald), gotten custody of her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) and seen her company grow. However, she and her two partners, Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps) have hit a wall. While their robotic inventions are cutting edge, they lack the funds to develop them. Enter slimy tech billionaire, Alton Appleton (Jemaine Clement) who offers to buy the rights to their gizmos, promising they will be used benevolently. Yeah, right…
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army comes knocking on Gemma’s door in the person on Col. Tim Sattler (Timm Sharp.) Seems a robot using the tech she invented has been stolen and used for nefarious purposes. A robot dubbed AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) has gone rogue and is threatening all sorts of international cyber-shenanigans. They need Gemma’s help to bring her in and the only way to do that is to fight fire with fire. She needs to reactivate M3GAN.
There are a great many moving parts, including a subplot involving Christian (Aristotle Athari), Gemma’s love interest and fellow genius, who is lobbying Congress for greater AI regulations. Needless to say, those expecting another techno-horror film will be thrown with the opening sequence. More akin to something found in a James Bond movie, we see AMELIA infiltrating and dispatching a bunker-full of terrorists. Also requiring an adjustment is this feature’s tone, which leans far more towards comedy rather than suspense.
This proves to be a welcome change as Johnstone supplies his cast with more than a few pithy lines while the sarcasm employed where responsible use of technology is concerned is more effective than preaching. Williams, who serves as one of the film’s producers, seems more at home with this approach, while the rest of the cast is also in line with the movie’s satirical tone.
While Johnstone strives to bring a bit of humanity to his titular mechanical murderer, it doesn’t quite land. There’s little warmth to the character, as it seems her operating system is the Bugs Bunny 2.0. Dispatching one smart alecky line after another, her character remains too abrasive to be embraced, though, McGraw does her best to convince us otherwise during her conversations with her cyborg savior.
The action, and there’s plenty of it in the last hour, is effectively staged, but the film ultimately overstays its welcome, its dire warning of the dangers of technology driven home again and again. Still, give Johnstone a bit of credit. He could have made “M3GAN 2.0” a clone of its former self, instead of making a mostly entertaining cautionary tale for the Tik Tok generation.
2 1/2 Stars
